


I Didn't Pour The Gasoline (Just Lit The Sparkler And Ran)

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [109]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Worldbuilding, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26039464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Ponds brings Colt an unexpected request
Series: Soft Wars [109]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 24
Kudos: 344





	I Didn't Pour The Gasoline (Just Lit The Sparkler And Ran)

Colt is good. He’s _very_ good but that isn’t a surprise. _ Edee _1 men are, overwhelmingly. They’ve all got that fangs’ edge of feral to them. Fox is just the only one that doesn’t bother to hide it.

(It was on purpose, Fox confessed once in barely a breath, crushed to Ponds’ back in the curve of his pod. 6 has a vendetta, a message to send, a point to make. When you look at one of 6’s boys, you’ll know them as they are and as he’s made them. You’ll know their lethality is due him, and not whoever thinks they have the right to take what isn’t theirs.

You’ll know that if you want dangerous, you leave 6 what’s his and he will deliver.)

Colt puts Rex down again. Smooth, easy, practiced. The motion that does it is mechanically economical and agonizingly precise.

In his half second of bought breathing room he steadies himself, prepares for the next clash. Glances up almost, almost to the top of the stands but away again before eyes can meet. Colt knew nearly the moment Ponds’ walked in: his non-acknowledgment is a point he deliberately chose to make.

There’s galaxies in what Edee men don’t say. Eras in the narrow of their eyes and leagues in the tilts of their chins. It’s a language unto themselves and as close as Ponds has been, he only gets maybe a word in ten.

Colt doesn’t acknowledge Ponds, but he lets him know he sees.

Rex hasn’t. He climbs to his feet, tucks exhaustion away like shame and Ponds can only barely recognize his shakiness in the mulish clench of his jaw. Colt allows generous seconds for him to adjust. They announce their start just below Ponds’ hearing and they move, weapons that walk like men. Sweat arcs silver under blue-green artificial lights. Their meeting echoes violence off the walls.

It’s not the first clash or even the third that takes Rex down. Rex is good himself, not a one of their brothers would have allowed any less. He’s fast and nimble; he can close a strike and avoid the follow up in a thousand different ways. Fractals of if-thens spiral out behind his eyes. The longer you fight Rex, the more he learns your weaknesses.

But the longer he fights, the more he focuses on your weaknesses. The less he focuses on his own.

Ponds doesn’t see the opening Colt finds that takes Rex to one knee, curled and panting. A tap, between the eyes, kill-strike, and it’s over. Maybe Rex could still fall into stance again, push up past ache and tremor and snap to rigid formation, challenge in his eyes and bile in his throat. Because Rex is Ponds’, but he’s a little bit Wolffe’s and some inherited idiocy was unavoidable. Colt is too smart to let him. Both CCs know Rex’s range isn’t on physicals tomorrow but after tonight even the hard backs of classroom chairs will pang.

Rex doesn’t see Ponds. Not during cooldown, not during hydrate. Not as Colt runs through what can’t be anything but an after-action, tapping elbows and hips while Rex gorges himself on correction freely given, ahead of the all-too-soon day when any he finds will be bought with blood.

Too smart, their Rex’ika, too aware. Too positive, despite it all. Ponds won’t bother to wish for a galaxy where they could let him keep that. Wishes waste breath and air is a commodity bought and sold.

Rex doesn’t see Ponds as he leaves, towel tucked around his neck and eyes far from the here and now. Ponds doesn’t blame him; he’s always been good at being overlooked when he puts his mind to it. When he doesn’t actively put his mind to being seen.

“Have something to say?”

Edee men, though, have always been good at seeing what lingers in corners. Their stares dissect, analyze, evaluate. The weight of your worth unravels under their gaze, long before a single word slings its way to life.

Eerie, those Edee men, people who see will think. But Edee men are so, so good at not being seen. How convenient, Ponds thinks, that they grew next to the _ Shebse _2 who are so, so good at drawing eyes. He’s wondered in darker moments, if that that wasn’t a plan of 6’s as well.

“A thing or two,” Ponds agrees with cheer they’ll both know is false. His head dangles over the seat edge of cold bleachers, his feet sling as far up the incline of them as they’ll go. He stretches, as at ease as he is half slung over Fox’s bunk. He grins and revels in the aggravation he’s sure is there. They reserve their thoughts, Edee men, even when they fire their words across oncoming bows. They can’t abide when others do the same. It’s kind of cute. Ponds may be especially practiced in poking at it.

“Plan to get on with it? Or am I going to have to guess?”

Ponds already knows Rex asked for this, training upon training, remedial lessons for the advanced class he’s near top of. Ponds knows, and if he didn’t Colt wouldn’t bother with an explanation he doesn’t feel he owes.

A decade of exertion is ground into the bleachers, too melded in to the durasteel frame to completely hide under regular dousing of disinfectant. Millions of brothers caught their breaths on these benches, sank into them and waited for their next call to fight. Perched on them to let the steel leech away the heat their blood boiled up. Colt doesn’t slump but when he sits it’s grams heavier than average. He fumbles for his own towel and Ponds nudges it to his questing hands.

War is already starting to drag her claws white lined and rough down Colt’s skin, intimate touches across his shoulders and a starburst kiss disappearing down his hip. Vanished like a dirty secret when he shrugs back into his uppers. Ponds maybe has a minute, minute and a half, of his patience left. He rallies.

“I’ve got a super tiny, barely noticeable little request.” He wriggles until the beveled edge of the seat doesn’t cut quite so firmly into his back. If it jostles Colt in the process, it’s all coincidence. “Call it a favor, if you want.”

Annoyance is easy to read on the Shebse. Rex pouts, Wolffe glares. Cody and Bly feign indifference but they’ve never managed to make that take root. Edee will simmer or they won’t. They’ll smile or they won’t, they’ll glare or they won’t, they’ll leave or they won’t. Ponds can recreate the same situation a thousand different times and any of the three of them will give a thousand different responses, all as inscrutable as the last.

They’re friends, Edee and Shebs, as much of friendships as squads can steal for themselves. The barrier of competition that could too easily hem _ vode _3 deep in their dorms is thinner in the wall between their two. Ponds likes to think he had something to do with that, maybe even more than Cody and Fox seeking each other out to trade cut-glass-smiles glittering with taunt and taking turns gleefully teaching each other something of humility. They’re friends, so where Colt would smile or glare or walk away instead he’ll use Ponds’ face as a towel rack and wait out his nonsense.

Ponds laughs, and Colt snorts.

“It’s late Shebs and your brat left me some joints I’d like to ice. Get on with it.”

And yet, and yet. Rex went to the mat while Colt stood tall, took his feet after at the end of Colt’s outstretched hand, stumbled out of the gym under Colt’s careful eye. What marks Rex bestowed on Colt, Colt made sure the CT left the spar no wiser to them.

Pride, glinting with a little shimmer of pettiness Edee men would pretend they’re above. Ponds could try to hide his giggle but why would he bother?

Colt sighs, and Ponds counts that as a win.

“I want you to step things up. With Rex.”

Colt watches, eyes dark with assessing. He weighs Ponds sincerity, measures against experience and comes up short. “I’m not going easy on him.” The words are slow and careful as if Ponds could have missed it.

Ponds grins, and Colt eyes his upside down smile with not-quite-wariness. Alertness, maybe. They’ve long learned not to bother trying to anticipate him. “You’re not,” he can agree, but it’s not enough. “I don’t want you to not-go-easy. Not just.”

They’re wild, Edee men, and only hidden for as long as they can be bothered. They pick you to bone if they feel like it, crack you open and show you what you don’t want to see. They’ll twist words and intentions into weapons you hand them. When they want to.

“You’re training him like a _ vod'ika _4 and I’d like you to stop.”

Those in their circle know that Rex is Ponds. They know Ponds vicious in his defense. They don’t seem to know Ponds is ever concerned of anything else.

That’s fine. Ponds hasn’t put much work into appearing otherwise.

“If this is some sort of vicarious assassination attempt,” Colt warns, friendly but with a dark edge of menace, “I’ll think less of you.”

Ponds sniffs, offended. As if he’d let the other Shebse do his dirty work for him. And none of them were inclined to take up arms unnecessarily anyway. They all know what Rex is trying to do. Even if they are, all of them, a little hurt he’s never told them as much.

He’s growing up, making his own decisions, forging his own path. He’ll find that place where independence doesn’t mean isolation; everyone does. Ponds would like him to be a bit quicker on that but can’t begrudge him the time he needs to get there. Besides, Rex is part Cody’s too: sometimes he’ll think things and forget he hasn’t said them out loud.

But this, for once, isn’t actually about Rex.

Ponds won’t bother to say that. Colt won’t believe him. Ponds has always been very, very good at letting people think they know all there is to know about him.

“Y’know Colt’ika, I think I might start to think less of _you_ for such baseless, unfounded, _horrific_ insinuations. I think I might-”

Colt puts the towel back over his face. He catches Ponds on an inhale, and Ponds’ sputters and giggles nearly tumble them both right off the stands. Ponds thrashes free of the grotty thing; if it had been Fox, he’d have accidentally smacked an elbow against a nerve in the upper leg and carefully wouldn’t smirk at the hiss. Fox would smack back, the evening would derail.

It’s hard to keep on topic around Fox

“Look at this,” Ponds demands instead and the thrust comm barely misses Colt’s nose. “Isn’t he the cutest?”

“What?”

“His name is Stak.” Ponds doesn’t give Colt the breath to recover. You can’t, with Edee men. Give them a toe-hold and they’ll build an encampment. “That’s me with him in a headlock. That’s me beating him at arm wrestling. That next one is him running a 5 man ground assault exercise single-handedly. He says,” Ponds pushes, voice tipped to sly, “that that program only has about two hundred thousand major permutations. Once you’ve seen them all it’s _simple_ to predict.”

“I wasn’t aware you were going to adopt another one.” The words are dismissive, but Colt’s attention is captured. He’s starting to see.

“I’m going to promote him. He’s my SiC.”

Maybe Stak doesn’t know that yet. Maybe Corps Commander Neyo doesn’t either, though he’s been firm that every squadron commander in the 91st was in charge of his own staffing.

Maybe whoever Ponds’ Jedi will be doesn’t know yet. They will.

The Kaminoans do know. Ponds had anchored his feet and let their reservations break against his resolve. After all, Ponds had a _ Star of Staves _5 card tucked in his sleeve pocket: evidence-based reasoning.

“That’s a controversial choice-”

“It isn’t. Why would it be?” Ponds twists, heels over head and flitters upright.

Ponds knows, intimately: CTs aren’t meant for command. Command is design, and the few anomalies among the masses that show the aptitude are identified early, recoded, renumbered, slipped quietly in to where gaps have developed with no notice drawn to it, with the expectation that they’re far too young to remember being anything but a CC. CTs aren’t designed for command, aren’t _meant_ for it. The Kaminiise maintain divisions of purpose with inflexible rigor.

CTs aren’t designed for more than foot soldiers, and yet there are two in ARC training, six in in-atmo flight combat, eighteen Strike commandos, twenty seven ARFs, a hundred and eight snipers. More than six hundred who suddenly found their paramedic training doubling in complexity, their duties rolling from _triage_ to _save_.

One who will commission as a Lieutenant. Two, if Ponds has anything to say about it.

“In the last four years, the longnecks have started re-evaluating the tactical value of their CT units. They’re starting to surmise they can get higher quality output than what they calculated.” Four years. Just after Rex started walking among their squad. It could be coincidence.

Ponds doesn’t believe in coincidence. He doesn’t know anyone who does.

“He’s precedent,” Colt murmurs.

Rex is a dreamer. He is big dreams, big plans, big potential packed so tightly that sometimes it hurts hurts hurts to look at him. They’re all built and designed and coded and Ponds had never once before Rex met anyone who’d dared think they could make themselves something _more_ than their design.

But the Shebse accidentally taught him to shine. They gave him a place to draw eyes and let him glow. There’s advantage to be found there.

“They let 17 make exceptions for him,” Ponds shares, though he knows he doesn’t have to. He knows when 17 went to argue for Rex, he had 6 at his shoulder, firing spite. “But they opened that door. It would be a shame to let them try to close it again.”

Rex is unignorable proof that CTs are more than bolt stoppers. If he can exceed specs, why can’t Stak?

Why can’t Keeli, that sure-shot Doom is quietly maneuvering for? Why can’t Blockade, the commo maestro Fox is creating titles and positions to hold? Why can’t Styles, who could carry his pack and an injured Grey in full kit for three days without tiring?

Ponds wants Rex to walk tall for his own sake. He knows his vod’ika won’t begrudge him using that to give others the chance to do the same.

“The flashier Rex is, the more distracted everyone will be when I grab Stak and make a run for it.” Ponds hides his truth underneath: the more valuable Rex is, the greater chance the Kaminoans will consider more of their base product could be the same.

He wonders how much Colt knows. How much he’s seen for himself, how much he’s read from Ponds. Edee men, Ponds thinks and smiles wry. You never can tell _what_ they’re thinking.

“Can he handle that?” If nothing else, Colt has seen the core of Ponds’ intent. Don’t train Rex like your neighbor squad’s kid. Don’t train him as you would a little brother you’re trying to nourish. Train him like a brother you already expect too much from.

Fight him like you fight Wolffe, like Gree fights Bly, like Fox fights Cody. Fight him like he’s an equal, and you’re prepared to bring hell and all its sith down on him to find an advantage. Force him to meet you where you are. Force everyone to watch what a CT can do, given a nudge.

“He can.”

Shebse has poured everything they are into Rex. All their skills and techniques, their knowledge and ingenuity. All their stubborn; after all, Rex is Ponds’ but he’s also a little bit Bly’s and the bullheadedness was inevitable. Still, Ponds won’t blame Colt for doubting: Rex will never be a warhammer, may not even be the vibroblade hidden in a boot. But he’s the little vicious serrated edge that will catch a wound and devastate.

And while eyes are on him, Wolffe can grab those twins who fly like physics only reigns over other people. Cody can line his forward company command with the two full squads of infantrymen who all have a particular habit of slipping in to places trying to keep them out. Bly can stop banthashitting the paperwork to support whatever he was already going to do regardless. And Ponds can maybe get his third in command without the six hours of filibuster he had to do to get his second.

Their eyes catch, hold. Colt meets his weaponized cheer with amused resignation. “If he asks, I’ll tell him it was Wolffe’s idea.”

_This_ is why Colt is Ponds’ second favorite Edee. “I owe you a pudding cup!” he chirps, and Colt’s snort says he plans to collect. That’s fair. He’ll have earned one, Ponds thinks, once he’s realized what a knytix hive he’s helping to kick. The longnecks are sure to be less than appreciative of the wanton destruction to their finely cultivated classification system. It’ll make for some interesting times.

Ponds giggles. He’ll make it two pudding cups, as belated apology. Edee men are rabid about their sweet things.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Jaws, Fangs. Name of a CC squad. Back  
> 2\. Assholes. Name of a CC squad. Back  
> 3\. Brothers. Back  
> 4\. Little Brother. Back  
> 5\. Suit and value of a special card in Sabacc. Back  
> Stak totally took his name from 'Stack Overflow'. No I will not be listing sources.


End file.
